An Inconvenient Woman

by Dominick Dunne

  As Cyril drove up the long driveway of the Mendelson estate, turning right to enter the magical part that could not be viewed through the gates at the entrance, his heart beat faster. It had always been a disappointment to his editor, Lucia Borsodi, that he did not have access to the great house. It had not mattered to her that no other social columnist in the city had access either, or that the late Jules Mendelson loathed social publicity. Lucia Borsodi told him over and over that in New York, Dolly De Longpre, the famed doyenne of the breed, had access to all the best houses of both the old and new society, and even, when she visited Los Angeles, as she did once a year, was invited to dine at the Mendelsons’, which was an annual rebuff to Cyril. But, finally, he had arrived at the private and exclusive estate that for years had been his dream to enter.

  As he drove his car into the courtyard, he gazed ahead with joy. The vast house before him was everything he had imagined it was going to be. The front door opened before he reached it, and he walked into the hallway, without even looking at Dudley, drawn to the sight of the sweeping stairway and the six Monet paintings ascending upward, as if it were a magnet.

  “Oh, marvelous, marvelous,” he said, looking up, looking left, looking right, at the treasures everywhere, forming sentences in his mind of the descriptions he would write. Catching sight of himself in a Chippendale mirror over a console table, he was pleased with his smart appearance, in his well-cut seersucker suit, blue shirt, and pink tie.

  Dudley, who refrained from offering a greeting, led him down the corridor into the cool shadows of the library. Outside it was very hot, but blue-and-white-striped awnings kept the sun from the beautiful room. Immediately responding to the luxury, Cyril felt comfortable. To the right, over the mantel, was van Gogh’s White Roses. He wanted to stop and look, but the butler opened the doors to the terrace and went outside. “Mrs. Mendelson is cutting roses in the garden,” he said. He raised a hand and pointed toward a large sculpture of a sleeping woman. “Beyond the Henry Moore, to the left, is the rose garden.” He then turned and reentered the house.

  Cyril felt disappointment. He loathed the sun. His fair skin was of the variety that burned and blistered. He would have much preferred to have his meeting with Pauline in the cool library, sitting on fine chairs beneath fine paintings, holding cool drinks in fine glasses. He would have liked a tour, room by room, antique by antique, painting by painting, as he had so often heard from Hector Paradiso honored guests were sometimes treated to, if they expressed interest in the treasures of the house.

  The outdoor locale had been Pauline’s idea. Whatever the disagreeable man had to say to her, she wished it to be out of the earshot of Dudley and the other servants. As Cyril walked across the acre of lawn, he wished he had brought his straw hat to protect his sensitive skin from the strong rays of the sun. At the same time, he noticed and memorized the extraordinary pieces of sculpture that Jules Mendelson had collected. “Beyond the Henry Moore,” the butler had said. He wanted to remember that.

  Pauline’s back was to him when he saw her. She was leaning over to clip an enormous pink rose, which she then held to her nose for an instant. She wore gardening gloves and a large straw hat. On the lawn beside her was a basket in which were several dozen roses of different hues of red and pink. He watched her as she waved away a wasp that buzzed too closely to her. Even unobserved, he noticed that she retained her elegance, and the picture of her was pleasing to his eye.

  “Pauline,” he called out, excitedly, as if he were a guest at a garden party approaching his hostess, rather than the almost author of a salacious book about Pauline’s late husband and her late husband’s mistress. Although he knew she must have heard him, as the distance between them was not excessive, she did not turn around immediately, and he called out again, “Pauline.”

  Pauline had not turned around because she could not bear it when the feline old Etonian, who never actually went to Eton, called her by her first name. She felt the intimacy to be an impertinence, but she did not correct him. Instead, she called him Mr. Rathbone.

  “Hello, Mr. Rathbone,” she said, bestowing on him the overly gracious smile that people like her reserved for underlings who had overstepped the bounds. He recognized her look and refrained from requesting her to call him Cyril. Nor did he attempt to kiss her on the cheek, as he had at Casper Stieglitz’s party when she pulled back from him and said she had a cold. There were garden chairs by the pavilion, and she indicated with a gesture that they would sit there.

  “This is all very beautiful, Pauline,” he said, looking around at the house and grounds.

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  “The Maillol sculpture is to die for,” he said.

  She nodded at the mention of the sculpture that had been her husband’s favorite, but she made no attempt to apprise him of the fact that it had been her husband’s favorite, nor did she attempt to engage in hostess talk, as it had been he who insisted he had urgent information to impart to her. To indicate to him that the moments between them were to be brief, she neither removed her gardening gloves nor settled back in her chair.

  Although such signals as she gave him caused him to be nervous in her presence, he adopted a languid posture when he seated himself, as if he were used to such afternoon tête-à-têtes in the rose garden at Clouds.

  “Such a hot day,” he said. With his hand, he shielded his eyes from the sun and wished there were an umbrella to pull up for shade.

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “I long to see your famous yellow phalaenopsis orchid plant,” he said.

  “Mr. Rathbone, please,” she replied, closing her eyes and waving her hand. “No garden club tours today. You spoke on the street of a matter of urgency. Let us deal with that matter and forget about my yellow phalaenopsis.”

  Even then, holding all the aces as he did, he would have tossed them aside to become her acolyte, the way Hector Paradiso had been, but he realized she was not to be won over by his compliments or charm. Rebuffed, he smiled in defeat. “As I often write in my column, Pauline, there is no one tougher than a tough society lady,” he said.

  “True,” she agreed.

  “You’ve never liked me, have you, Pauline?” he asked.

  “With very good reason, Mr. Rathbone. But, again, let us get to this matter of urgency.” She pulled back her glove and consulted her watch, with no attempt to disguise the gesture.

  He ignored her request. “In a moment. There’s something I would like to straighten out first. Was it because you didn’t like me that I was not asked to deliver the eulogy at Hector’s funeral last year?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she replied impatiently.

  “You know, don’t you, that it should have been I who gave the eulogy.” He tapped his forefinger on his chest to indicate himself. “After all, I was his best friend.”

  Pauline did not respond, but she had the ability to speak without uttering a word, merely raising her eyebrows, and make her meaning very plain.

  “After you, I mean,” Cyril said quickly, correcting himself. “That ambassador who gave the eulogy hardly knew him. I always felt it was you who prevented me from giving the eulogy.”

  “Was there not a morals charge pending against you at the time, involving a beating, or something?” asked Pauline.

  Cyril, surprised, blushed deeply and said nothing.

  Pauline continued. “I seem to remember that my husband was informed of that fact. Archbishop Cooning was already of two minds as to whether or not he should officiate at the funeral Mass, despite the fact that Rose Cliveden had contributed a hundred thousand dollars to the refurbishing of the archbishop’s residence in Hancock Park. Under those circumstances, your candidacy as eulogist was considered by the planners of the funeral, of which I was not one, to be, uh, unseemly. I think that was the word that was used at the time. Unseemly.”

  Cyril’s silence continued.

  “There is a bee on your shoulder,” he said, finally.

 
; “It’s not a bee. It’s a wasp,” she said, brushing it off her shoulder with her gloved hand.

  “Pesky creatures,” said Cyril, waving his hand frantically to discourage the wasp from coming in his direction. He did not like to say, for fear of appearing unmasculine, that he was terrified of wasps. “Should we not go inside?” he asked.

  “It’s gone,” she said, unconcerned. “Tell me, Mr. Rathbone. As we seem to be playing the truth game, were you the one who sent me, anonymously, the photograph of my husband and Miss March fleeing the fire in the Meurice Hotel from the Paris newspaper?”

  “Yes, I thought you should know,” he said.

  “Oh, I see. You did it out of kindness, you mean?” she asked. “Your reputation for duplicity clings to you, Mr. Rathbone.” Reserve, propriety, and good manners were born within her, but she made no attempt to disguise the disdain in her voice.

  “I felt you should know,” he repeated.

  “Of course, you did,” she said, with no lessening of the edge in her tone.

  “Hector saw the picture. I sent it to him, but he didn’t have the nerve to show it to you,” said Cyril.

  “Hector was a gentleman. One of the many differences between you and that fine man,” she replied.

  Smarting now from her contempt, he no longer tried to be winning. “There is a book being written about you and your husband, as I am sure you have heard,” he said.

  “It would be hard not to hear about it, as you have covered it extensively in your column,” she replied.

  “I have heard the tapes that Miss March has recorded,” he said. “There are forty hours recorded thus far.”

  Pauline folded her gloved hands.

  He began to pour out to her the story of her husband’s long affair with the former waitress, sparing nothing, feeling no constraint. He knew now he could never make her his friend, so there was no longer any point in constraint. He leaned forward toward her and hissed out her husband’s history, truths and untruths intermingled, wanting only to wound.

  “When Jules left all the parties early, right after dinner, leaving Hector to bring you home, because he had to be up so early in the morning to take his calls from his offices in Europe, he really got up so early because he wanted to see Flo, because he needed to knock off a quick piece on the way to work, to hold him over until his regular visit in the afternoon. His sexual appetite was insatiable. He reappeared on her doorstep every afternoon at a quarter to four, without fail, no matter what the business crisis, first things first. In the several hours he spent with her each afternoon, before returning home to you for his glass of wine in your sunset room, to discuss the events of the day, before you dressed for dinner to attend whatever the party of the evening was, he came three and sometimes four times, each time varying the position. He could not get enough of the woman. It’s all on the tapes, Pauline.”

  Pauline sank back in the wrought iron chair.

  “There is more,” said Cyril.

  She looked at him. “How much more?”

  “Much more.”

  “Are you going to make me pull this out of you, sentence by sentence, Mr. Rathbone? Or are you going to tell me? After all, that was what you came here for, was it not?”

  “It is simply that it is indelicate,” he said. The insincerity in his voice was so apparent that he heard it himself.

  “Then be indelicate. I’m sure it will not be your first indelicacy.”

  “You see, I have the forty hours of microcassettes. Actually, I mean that I have thirty-nine of the forty hours. There was one cassette left in my tape recorder which is still in Miss March’s house. She seemed very private about it. Something about our mutual friend Hector’s death. Even to me, she would not reveal the entire contents.”

  Beneath the wide brim of her straw hat, Pauline closed her eyes. She was determined not to allow Cyril Rathbone to witness a tear escaping.

  “For a price, I would be able to turn everything over to you,” he said.

  “So that’s what this matter of urgency is about,” she said. “I should have known. Blackmail.”

  “Your son, your bad-boy son, Kippie, isn’t that his name? It has something to do with your son,” said Cyril.

  Pauline raised her eyebrows in an arch of displeasure meant to disguise the fear that she felt, but she did not trust herself to speak, as that fear might have become apparent. Another wasp buzzed near her. She looked down at her shoulder and, with her gloved hand, flicked it off her in a nervous fashion that had nothing to do with the wasp but everything to do with the words that were coming out of the mouth of Cyril Rathbone.

  He leaned forward toward her again, aware that finally he had succeeded in reaching her vulnerable point. A smile twisted his lips as he continued elaborating on the details. “Apparently—this is all according to Flo March, of course—your son, while on temporary leave from his drug rehabilitation center in France, was arrested in the Los Angeles airport for carrying drugs. He needed ten thousand dollars immediately. You refused him, apparently. As did the gangster Arnie Zwillman, with whom your son enjoys a peculiar sort of friendship. And so he went late that night to visit your best friend, Hector, catching poor Hector, apparently, in the middle of a sexual act of a deviant nature with a well-known video star of the pornographic variety named Lonny Edge, whom Hector picked up in a gay bar in West Hollywood called Miss Garbo’s on the way home from a very swanky party in your house that you declined to let me cover for my column. Incidentally, of no moment here, Mr. Lonny Edge has subsequently become the housemate of Flo March, to help cover the destitute woman’s living expenses, since you saw fit to cancel the bequests made to her by your husband. At any rate, your son, Kippie, was so hard-pressed for the ten thousand dollars that you would not give him that he offered himself sexually to your friend, Hector, although that sort of thing was not remotely his inclination. When Hector refused, there was a bit of a scuffle, apparently, and Hector produced a gun, and—”

  The wasp that Pauline had flicked off her shoulder flew into Cyril Rathbone’s mouth and stung his tongue. In an agony of pain, he could not even scream as his tongue swelled with the poison of the sting. His eyes rolled in his head, imploring Pauline for help.

  Pauline stared at the spectacle of the writhing man in front of her. Sweat broke out on his face and body. His shirt became soaked, and the sweat seeped through to his seersucker suit. He tried to stand and then fell to his knees in front of her. She picked up the basket that held the roses she had been cutting.

  Pauline drew out her clippers and started to work on her roses. “You must always clear away any foliage that will be beneath the water level in the vase,” she said, bringing her gloved hand down the stem and pulling off the leaves. “And then, when you cut off the bottom of the stem, make sure always that you do it at an angle, like this, do you see? Now, these roses from my garden have particularly thick stems, which makes it difficult for the water to penetrate, so I always suggest, when I talk to the newcomers at the garden club, to peel away half the stem, like this.”

  Cyril Rathbone twisted and turned. With his mouth wide open, she saw that his tongue was hugely inflated and vividly red. Saliva dripped out of his mouth and rolled down his chin. He began to choke, holding his hands to his throat, and terrible noises emanated from his mouth.

  “I hope it hurts terribly, Cyril,” she said calmly.

  Finally, she had called him by his first name, but he was by then beyond caring. Cyril Rathbone fell over, dead.

  Pauline walked across the lawn and into the house through the French doors in the library, carrying her basket of roses. As she did so, Dudley passed in the hallway beyond.

  “Dudley,” called out Pauline.

  “Yes, Mrs. Mendelson?” he said, entering the room.

  “That man from Mulholland magazine?”

  “Mr. Rathbone?” he replied.

  “He seemed to be in some sort of distress. A coughing fit, choking or something. Perhaps Smitty or Jim should go
down and check on him.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Mendelson. I’ll buzz Smitty in the kennels.”

  Pauline deposited her roses on the table and continued on to the hallway and up the stairs. Midway up, she turned. “And, Dudley,” she called.

  “Yes, Mrs. Mendelson.”

  “I think you should call an ambulance.” She continued up the stairs. “And the police.”

  Flo’s Tape #26

  “It often surprised me that Jules didn’t have a bodyguard, or bodyguards. So many of the film stars went around surrounded by them, as did many of the millionaires in the city who were nowhere near as rich as Jules. Of course, there were guards at Clouds and attack dogs, and they kept a fake police car in the driveway to scare off the curious, but he never went out in public with guards. He thought they attracted too much attention. And he said if anybody was going to get him, they’d get him anyway. He didn’t think it looked right for a presidential designate, which he was, to go around with guards just because he was rich.

  “One time when I was in the Bentley with him, driving back to my old neighborhood in Silverlake to pick up some mail, he opened the glove compartment and took out a gun that he held in his lap while we drove. I hated that. But he said there were people out there, mad people, who were out to get people like him.”

  27

  By the time Pauline had bathed and changed, both the ambulance and the police had arrived and parked their vehicles in the courtyard. She sent word down to Dudley by Blondell not to allow the attendants to carry Cyril Rathbone’s body through her house to get to the ambulance, but to carry it around by the side of the house behind the kennels. From her bedroom, where the windows were open, she could hear one of the attendants say, in a Hispanic accent, as he was lifting the remains of Cyril Rathbone into the ambulance, “They’re dropping like flies in this house. This is my second time here. Last time I accidentally hit the picture on the stairs, and you should have heard the lady squawk.”